This invention relates to article conveyors and, particularly to a novel driving system for individually driving closely spaced rollers of an arcuate conveying system.
In the continuous transport of articles along a conveying line, it is necessary to use closely spaced live rollers for producing a continuous flow of the articles. A paramount problem lies in the driving the individual rollers when it becomes necessary to transport the articles around sharply curved conveying sections.
Various types of curved conveying sections have been proposed in the past for producing a continuous flow of articles. A basic problem in the past has been in attempting to individually drive closely spaced rollers around an arcuate path. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,610,404, issued on Oct. 5, 1971, there is disclosed a curved, live roller conveyor employing straight or tapered rolls driven from a common, power drive shaft through a system of pulleys and elastomeric belts. This drive system is not suitable for driving an array of closely spaced rollers of a sharply curved arcuate conveying section in that the common drive shaft and pulley system requires much more space than is normally available.
Other types of roller drive systems have included powering a common drive shaft constructed of universal joints. However, in such mechanisms the universal joints consume line drive shaft space, thereby limiting the number of rollers directly driven from the drive shaft.